


beneath my tongue hide the words that'd show you all of me

by manusinistra



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:38:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manusinistra/pseuds/manusinistra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s stupid, going on the Halloween train.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beneath my tongue hide the words that'd show you all of me

**Author's Note:**

> Set during 3x13.

It’s stupid, going on the Halloween train.

Emily knows this. They all do. You don’t survive A for long without learning the importance of contingency plans and escape strategies, and there can be neither in an enclosed cabin hurtling high-speed through the night.

Regardless, Emily buys her ticket. The reason is this: A’s endgame isn’t seeing them dead. It’s robbing them of their lives, terrorizing them until they lock themselves in a room with all the lights on, bar the windows and stare out into the dark, making monsters of the slightest movement.

A’s weapon is fear, and Emily refuses to let it rule her. So she saves up for an awesome costume, gets her mother to tease her hair into 60’s glory and knocks on Paige’s door with more skin exposed than at the average swim meet.

Paige’s face is perfect: her jaw actually drops, eyes roving over Emily from top to bottom.

Emily laughs, and for a moment she’s not a pawn in the twisted game A has made of their lives. She’s just a girl – a normal teenage girl who has dressed up for her girlfriend and gotten exactly the reaction she’d been hoping for.

So she basks in it, takes Paige by the lapels and tugs her into a kiss.

;;

“Sometimes I’m still amazed that you’re with me.”

The vulnerability in Paige’s voice makes Emily’s heart clench.

“I’m amazed that you’re with me,” she says, because really that’s the more miraculous.

She’s done so much wrong when it comes to Paige: started things too soon, still caught in the wreckage of her love for Maya, let Lyndon twist that love into a betrayal that almost cost Paige her life. Even now she can’t promise Paige safety; in her dreams the knife is still at Paige’s neck and hers is the hand holding it there.

Yet Paige is here, looking at her like there’s nothing better in the world. It’s not that Paige imagines some ideal version of her, either, smooths over her cracks and fissures and crumbling foundations – she knows the things Emily’s responsible for, the choices life has forced her to make.

She sees Emily in all her darkness but in Paige’s eyes there’s no blood on her hands. When Emily looks into them she can imagine being washed clean, and it’s dangerous, hoping for a happily ever after, but if anything good has come from A’s torment it’s learning how intrinsic danger is to life. It’s a silly excuse for sitting on the sidelines, and so when Paige speaks of things working out Emily lets herself believe.

“Tell me about love on your planet,” Paige says, and though she laughs Emily’s heart stutters.

Love.

It’s terrifying to let someone so far into you, and after burying the two girls she’d touched with her love Emily wasn’t sure she’d be able to feel it again. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever want to.

It’s there now, though, deep and warm and growing every time Paige reaches for her hand as they walk down the street. It crept up on her in slow degrees, and while she hasn’t put a name to it yet – this isn’t the time, a stolen interlude in a train car – Emily resolves to find the words soon. They’re meant for speaking, after all, for letting loose into the world and watching the glorious havoc they bring.

Emily thinks of those words as she gets lost in Paige’s kiss, makes a promise not to hold them back for long.


End file.
